Jesus’s Last Supper and the Biblical Passover

The Jewish Passover had its origins in the Old Testament narrative of God’s deliverance of the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery at the time of Moses. According to the book of Exodus, Israelite families who had been enslaved for several generations were ultimately redeemed from their bondage through the power of Jehovah, the God of their ancestors. With Moses as His mouthpiece, Jehovah demonstrated this power through a series of plagues that brought great destruction upon the land of Egypt.

Together, these plagues were meant to show God’s “mighty hand” and convince Pharoah “to let [His] people go” (Exodus 7:16; see Exodus 6–10). After Pharaoh refused to do so, however, Moses warned that the final plague would be the most devastating: the passing of the angel of death through the land and the subsequent loss of the firstborn child in each Egyptian household (see Exodus 11).

God promised the enslaved Israelites that they would be spared from the final plague if they followed specific instructions given by Moses: In the hours before sunset, each family was to prepare for a sacred meal by removing any leaven (yeast) in the house; slaughtering an unblemished one-year-old male sheep or goat, whose death was meant to take the place of the family’s firstborn child; and spreading its blood over the doorposts of the home (see Exodus 12:1–7).

Once the sun went down, family members were to gather and eat the roasted lamb meat (eaten in remembrance of the lamb that was just slaughtered on the family’s behalf), bitter herbs (an unpleasant-tasting root eaten in remembrance of the family’s bitter enslavement), and unleavened bread (which, in the haste of God’s deliverance, would not have time to rise) (see Exodus 12:8–11).

By following these instructions, the firstborn of each Israelite family would be spared, as the angel of death “pass[ed] over” their home (Exodus 12:13).

God’s deliverance of the enslaved Israelites came when the Pharaoh freed them from their bondage and allowed them to depart from the land of Egypt (see Exodus 12:28–42).

For subsequent generations, this series of events served as a reminder of God’s power to save His people from their oppressors and deliver them from their burdens. To help keep this memory alive, later Israelites would ritually reenact the original Passover meal every spring (see, for example, Joshua 5:10–11; 2 Kings 23:21–23; 2 Chronicles 30).

By the time of Jesus, Jewish families often observed this annual event by making a weeklong pilgrimage from their hometown to the Jerusalem temple. There, they would join throngs of other pilgrims sacrificing their lambs near the temple altar in preparation for a sacred meal that night.

Meanwhile, the homes in which the Passover meal was to be eaten were prepared for dining. After waiting for sunset, families would have retold the Passover story from the Hebrew Bible and imitated the ancient Israelites by eating the lamb meat, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. In the first century, these practices were often enhanced by drinking wine and singing psalms (such as Psalm 113–118) to celebrate the joys of God’s redemptive power.

This general pattern of commemorating a sacrificial Passover meal was observed among the Jewish community every spring until the Jerusalem temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. In fact, it is in the context of a Passover pilgrimage that Jesus made His final journey with His disciples from their home villages in Galilee to the crowded city of Jerusalem.

According to the synoptic Gospels, the disciples spent their last day with Jesus making preparations for one final Passover meal together—the Last Supper. The scriptural accounts suggest that, like other Jewish families, Jesus and the disciples gathered that night in a local home, possibly recounting the stories of the first Passover and singing psalms that recalled God’s power of deliverance. They then partook of the ritual Passover foods, including the cooked lambs meat, the bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and wine (see Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22).

What made Jesus’s final Passover remarkable, however, was when He broke pieces of the unleavened bread, poured the cup of wine, and said to His disciples: “Take, eat; this [bread] is my body. … Drink from [this cup], … for this is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26–28, NRSV).

By adding this new layer of meaning to the redemption symbolism of the Passover, He essentially told His disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine both in remembrance of God’s past deliverance of Israel and in recognition of their own personal deliverance through His redemptive work as the Messiah.

In other words, just as Israel was freed from Egyptian bondage by the blood of the original Passover lamb, so Jesus’s followers would be freed from the bondage of their sins by His death on the cross. Jesus Christ would be the ultimate Passover sacrifice provided by God for the salvation of His people.

Although the Passover is still commemorated in modern Judaism through an annual seder meal, most Christian communities no longer commemorate the festival as it was observed in the biblical period. However, through partaking of emblems representing the Savior’s sacrifice in regular worship services, modern Christians have preserved a small part of the biblical festival in their own worship practices.

When partaking of these symbolic emblems today, it is natural to recall the injunction of Jesus at His Last Supper to eat and drink in remembrance of His atoning mission. It is also appropriate to recall that this practice had its roots in a Jewish Passover meal as it was observed in the first century.

As such, those partaking of the sacrament have a beautiful opportunity to recall God’s deliverance of Israel in the past, while at the same time pondering their own redemption through the Savior’s atoning power and looking forward to the day He returns to continue His messianic mission of salvation.